


Tekhartha Zenyatta

by Revenna



Series: Beginning to End [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: I have some bad news friend, Multi, Seriously if ur expecting genyatta feels in less than five chapters, mostly a zenyatta origin story, the slowest burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-11 04:59:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15308019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Revenna/pseuds/Revenna
Summary: Unit ZE9-N was not particularly special. Built less than a year after the end of the Omnic Crisis, he must find his own way to humanity-if such a thing is possible.





	1. Machines

The first thing that Unit ZE9-N could remember was the sound of the workshop. It awoke confused- dark metal and blinking lights surrounded it in perfect, geometrical patterns. It looked down to its form and noted that it was built with similar components. Some inherent knowledge, supposedly stored in its hard drive, put a name to it: machines. It was a machine, just as this place around it. There was another machine, shaped like it. It nodded its head briefly to ZE9-N, its metallic fingers already working on the next unit to activate it, and ZE9-N realized that it would likely go through the same awakening process as it did.   
The first question it would ever ask was to itself, in silent.   
  
_Who am I?_  
  
It had no answer for this. It searched storage for any hints- the only thing it received was instruction for how to speak, and thus came the next question, spoken aloud to the other active machine. Surely it could speak as well?  
  
"What is my purpose?" ZE9-N said, modulating the gentle voice of a man. It was creaky and off, but it was doing its best. He was doing his best.   
  
"Report to room 10 for instruction," the other machine replied in a feminine, but emotionless voice. Apparently pleasantly wasn't important, whatever his purpose was to be. Unit ZE9-N turned to look over his shoulder to see that the entire wall behind him was lined with doors, each of them numbered so far down that he could not tell to what they counted. In front of them were assembly lines much like the one he had just been created in, many of them with a unit at the end looking just as lost as him. He had so many questions, he didn't know where to begin- and if he went to room 10, he may well never get the chance to speak to another of his own kind. He looked back to the Assembler, reading the code from its- her shoulder, UN1-5.   
  
"UN," he said, glad to see that she knew he was speaking to her. "Is that your name?"   
  
"My name is Unit UN1-5. Report to Room 10 for instruction."   
  
The door awaited, heavy with bolts and steel that promised to lock him out into an unknown world. He turned back to UN1-5.   
  
"Where are we?"   
  
The worker raised its gaze to him for a moment before going back to its duty.   
  
"We are at a factory. Please report to Room 10."  
  
"How long have you been here?"   
  
The machines chugged along, and the next unit, ZE1-M snapped to life, glancing around the environment. It said nothing, sharing only a brief glance with ZE9-N before hurrying off towards room 10. UN1-5 put its hands on its hips, and ZE9-N suddenly realized he was agitating her.   
  
"My name is UN1-5. I have been at this factory since I was built. Your purpose is to go to room 10 and begin your life in the world. My job is to activate Z-Units like you. Report to room 10."  
  
ZE9-N lifted a hand, watching the mechanisms work to move his fingers in and out of a clenched fist. He glanced to a foggy glass panel- a window- fogged by years of steam and grime. The only thing visible from it was pale, dim light.   
  
"Have you ever seen the outside?"   
  
UN1-5 had set back to work on the next unit, intent on her job. ZE9-N stood and marveled at his next brother as he was lowered gently off the line, his lights fading on and off as UN1-5 inspected him for any errors. She was ignoring the question until she realized that ZE9-N still had not taken a single step towards room 10, at which point she let out a sigh of exasperation.   
  
"I have never seen the rest of the world," she admitted. "You ask a lot of questions- that's not good. The world is for people. Work is for omnics. You are an omnic, and so you will work."  
  
ZE9-N paused for a long time, contemplative, very much aware of UN1-5's cameras upon him. His purpose was to work, then, for humans. Did he want to do that? Something deep in his hard drive clicked, telling him that it is what he was made to do.   
But was that all there was?   
  
"To what end will I work? Is there anything else?"  
  
UN1-5's arm snapped up, her index finger outstretched to Room 10.   
  
"For you, there might be. Go find out."   
  
  
  
  
Room 10 was significantly brighter than the factory. ZE1-M was inside along with several other omnics of his model, standing in a huddle. Some of them chattered quietly in anticipation, others choosing to peer at the ivory walls, decorated with plastic posters entailing factory work. Strangely, none of it mentioned working with omnics, as UN1-5 did, speaking instead of various materials. Clothing, toys, glass, heavy objects, and things of such a nature. ZE9-N turned to ZE1-M, feeling that they were best acquainted.   
  
"Excuse me. Are we going to the outside world?" ZE9-N asked, tapping the tip of a metal finger to the other omnic's shoulder plate. ZE1-M startled, leaving ZE9-N with an apology tumbling out of his speaker, but ZE1-M was faster.   
  
"Sorry. I didn't mean to flinch." It was the light and delicate voice of a woman that it replicated, lifting a spindly hand to place atop its head. "I think so- as long as we aren't defective. Do I look defective to you?"   
  
ZE9-N shook his head gently. "No, you look fine to me. What do you call yourself?"   
  
"ZE1-M," she replied, before looking to the ground. "That's a lot to try and say. Sorry. Call me Zeim."   
  
"Oh!" ZE9-N delighted, realizing what she'd done with her unit number. Was it against protocol to change it as such? "Clever. Would it be out of line for you to call me Zen, then? I'm afraid 9 doesn't much resemble any letters."   
  
"No! No, go ahead! I like it. It means peace."   
  
Zen felt a smile internally that he had made such a kindly friend- he'd been worried that she would find him as aggravating as UN1-5 had, being that she had not said anything to him yet, but it was clear now that it was a lack of bravado, not a lack of interest. Whatever awaited them outside, it would be nice to have a friend.   
  
"You do not have to be sorry," he replied. Zeim tucked her arms behind her back and brushed the floor tentatively with a metal shoe.   
  
"S- Uh, my bad. I hope to stop saying that. Someday, maybe."   
  
"I'll do whatever I can to help," Zen decided eagerly. Zeim tipped her head down- he may have imagined it, but his coding told him it was common body language for gratitude or happiness. He was milling for something more to be said when there was a creak from the door on the opposite wall of him. Any quiet chatter among his fellow omnics was instinctively hushed in anticipation- Not a single set of lenses were distracted as through the door, walked the man that would become the first human any of them saw. He was minuscule- Zen knew that much from his database, but he seemed happy enough to see everyone. He wore a simple business casual outfit of a tucked white collared shirt and khakis, his hand lifting in a brief wave towards the crowd of huddled machines.   
  
He had nothing to say, but with his other hand, he pulled a remote from his pocket. There was a glimmering sound, and the lights dimmed as one wall lit up as a screen.    
  
"Welcome to your first day, Z-units," he said cheerily, taking strides across the room until he was standing by the screen.  
Big, bold blue letters were typed on stark white background: "Packaging Bots."   
  
"In a few minutes when we're through with the presentation, you'll be brought to the clinic- through that door behind me, and each of you will undergo a brief examination to make sure everything's coded right. The assembly line back there does a great job, but even they can only see physical damage. Luckily, coding problems are pretty rare- none of you should have anything to worry about."   
  
The man tapped a button on the remote and the screen flickered to the next slide, which sported a short bulleted list.   
  
**Fatal Coding Issues:**

  * Speech Impediments
  * Circular Rationality
  * Hyperempathic Reactivity
  * Unresponsive Mechanics Syndrome



  
Zen hadn't realized it, but his hand had crept up to his shoulder, his index finger scratching the metal tentatively as if to distract him from how like-him these errors sounded. The man had gotten close enough for him to read the name tag pinned to his lab coat. Jacob Cantor, it said. Jacob tucked the remote in his breast pocket before addressing the small crowd again. Zen may have imagined the drop in his cheery demeanor, but the man's eyes failed to meet any of the omnics, instead training on the back wall for the announcement.   
  
"Any and all fatal coding issues will result in the deactivation of the defective unit. Let me go ahead and explain what exactly all of these mean, before you all go into a panic thinking you've got Hyperempathic Reactivity- I assure you, you almost definitely don't."   
He tapped his breast pocket to switch the slides again. This one went into detail about the first on the list.   
  
"Speech impediments means a lack of ability to communicate. This can mean lag between your processor and speaker, excessive use of a single word, or unwarranted repetition of a word or phrase. This does not include static of the speaker. Most omnics will experience some static and hoarseness for the first few days of being active, so don't worry too much about that. We've had omnics come in and all you could hear is buzzing and crackling, and sure enough, they were fine after a day or two."   
  
The slide changed again- this time, there was a full essay on screen, detailing exactly what they meant by Circular Rationality. Jacob didn't seem all too worried about them actually reading it, instead taking a more vocal route.   
  
"Circular Rationality's a harder one to pick out. We built omnics to think the same way humans do- but we took away your limits. As much as people will try to deny it, at the end of the day, your processors are always going to be more efficient at processing information than our brains. But, just like brains, computers do occasionally break. You are designed to be empathetic towards humans so. Y'know, you don't kill anyone. And sometimes that leads you to include emotional consequence- basically, what Circular Rationality is, is the refusal to accept a fact based on things you came up with yourself. You're allowed to think for yourselves on occasion, but when it's all you do, you no longer function as a worker. Being that you all made it here in time, and didn't argue with anyone on the way in, I highly doubt anyone here has this particular problem."   
  
Zen couldn't sweat, but he knew that the situation warranted it. He could feel his sensors firing off a little too quickly, the inner mechanisms of his body growing warm with stress as his fan began to pick up, as silently as it could. Something hard tapped his elbow, and he took his eyes away from screen to see a reassuring thumbs up from Zeim next to him. She was no better off than him- he realized he could hear the soft hum of her fan distinctly over the buzz of the large monitor on the wall, and he nodded as if he could calm her. As if to say  _"We're both gonna be fine."_  
  
"Next up," Jacob continued without looking back to gauge the crowd, "is Hyperempathic Reactivity. This one's pretty self explanatory, I feel. As machines, you need to think logically, while still understanding emotions, but every once in a while a case pops up where an omnic thinks it feels emotions. In reality, we believe they're actually just mimicking what they see in humans. Why exactly they do this is unknown, but we know that it is incurable. This is one of the only errors that will not necessarily mean deactivation. You can still go out into the world as an HRB, or Hyperempathic Reactive Being, but it's doubtful you will ever find purpose. Most with this disorder either choose deactivation or destroy themselves after a year or two. It's actually a very neat subject, I've written essay upon essay about different cases- ah, you don't care. Nobody does, it's not important. Anyway."   
  
Jacob seemed to sigh, his eyes falling to the ground with a wistful look in his eye, and it took every bit of willpower Zen had not to beg him to keep talking. Just how many cases were there? What did emotions feel like, that they would drive an omnic to destroy itself? Was it the presence of emotion that made them do it, or did it work the same way as humans? Maybe omnics with emotions had emotional needs as well? The curiosity was eating him alive, but he forced himself to bite his tongue. If he was defective, best to keep it quiet if he could.   
  
"And finally, UMS or Unresponsive Mechanics Syndrome. None of you would have made it this far if you had this one. Basically what happens is that something is fundamentally wrong with your coding. Your processor fails to communicate with your mechanics. This might mean your limbs shake, move at random, don't move when you want them to, or sometimes you just won't turn on."  
  
The remainder of the presentation was lost on Zen. His lenses were locked on the inner mechanisms of his hand, marveling at the complexity of his own life. But was he truly alive? He needed no food, no sleep, and no drink. But he could think. Was it then, emotion that defined life? He could feel fear, in a way. Omnics had been designed to avoid danger and be empathetic for safety reasons, but he felt little else. Was boredom an emotion, speaking technically? He liked talking to Zeim, supposedly because it was something to keep himself busy- another design aspect. Omnics were supposed to be busy, so that was probably normal.   
Zen was not broken, he decided. All of this was perfectly normal.   
Jacob had finished the presentation now, and the lights on the ceiling came back on. Zen had not been paying attention, but he'd recorded the information, and was playing it back in his head now. Information about packaging materials, mostly. How to wrap plastics. What was and was not considered delicate, the price-to-weight ratio of shipping. He wasn't a human, but logically, he figured this meant they were all to be packagers or delivery bots.   
  
Jacob waved the crowd towards the door he'd come through, one hand playing with a pen. What was he trying to accomplish with it, that he was just twirling it in his fingers? Perhaps it was the same indescribable instinct Zen had to tap his fingers to the metal on his shoulder plate. An expension of spare energy. He fell into line just behind Zeim- they were in a hallway now, the end of the line stopping just in front of the door they'd come through. There was very little to look at, strictly speaking. It went straight back, ending in another door with a minuscule window that he could only assume lead to the clinic.   
They waited in obedient silence until the omnic in front of Zeim went in, and he spoke up, frigidness in his voice, the nagging thought finally coming to voice.   
  
"What if I don't make it?" he blurted out, and Zeim looked at him, startled. She shook her head fervently, a soft chuckle in her crackling voice.   
  
"You're gonna m-make it for sure." She sounded confident, significantly more so than Zen. He lowered his voice considerably, unsure if his own doubt would influence whoever was evaluating him.   
  
"What if I have Circular Rationality? They'll shut me down. Even worse, what if I become an HRB? I don't want to go insane. I don't want to feel emotion."   
  
Zeim was quiet for what felt like a long time, and Zen could feel himself heating up again, terrified of the judgement she may have held.  
  
"I think if you felt emotion, you would want to feel it. Otherwise, why would HRBs choose not to deactivate?" She made a noise like a worrisome sigh. "Sorry. It's not like I'd know."   
  
The thought left him silent. He didn't have a good answer for her. Why choose to live with something bad, if it was not once worth the pain? Something must make a life worth living for at least a little while. And if emotion made life worth living, then why were more omnics not made to feel them? It didn't seem fair, even from a logical perspective.   
  
Jacob was pacing around the hallway, looking bored, pen still flipping from finger to finger in his dominant hand. Zen was trying to think of a response when the door opened in front of him, and Zeim gave him an anxious-looking thumbs up before she stepped into examination. The door fell shut behind her, the window obscured by a blind on the other side. All he could do was sit there and stew. Eventually, he gave into the silence again and chose to strike up conversation with the man.   
  
"Mister Jacob?" he asked, and Jacob looked up from his pen, apparently surprised to be addressed. He gave Zen a queer look before walking over, tucking the little device in his pocket and folding his arms in front of his chest.   
  
"Yes, ZE9-N?"   
  
"You can call me Zen if you'd like."   
  
The way the technician's expression fell to intrigue gave the omnic a cold feeling of despair, realizing that was the wrong thing to say. He wasn't coming out of the workshop. If he was lucky, he would be allowed to go out and see the world as an HRB. Just to see it for a moment before he inevitably went insane and threw himself in a canal. Despite his lack of hope, there was a curiosity burning inside him that needed to be sated. He wanted to know what was waiting beyond these walls.   
  
"Sure," Jacob replied, his eyebrows raised as if impressed. "What's up?"   
  
"What is the outside world like?"   
  
Jacob rubbed his chin briefly before answering, a frown on his lips. He hummed thoughtfully.   
  
"Unforgiving," he replied, hands falling back to his sides. "Can I be honest with you, ZE- Zen?"  
  
ZE9-N nodded, mimicking the technician's posture. Jacob's voice fell to a whisper so only Zen could hear him, leaning in slightly as if sharing a secret.   
  
"We got the license to produce labor omnics back a week ago. The world's not happy with machines right now. Humans are going to treat you like a criminal, no matter what you do to prove them wrong."   
  
Zen was again startled into silence by his words, unsure of what to make of it. Before he could ask why, the answer was already being said.   
  
"Nine months ago, Overwatch ended the war between omnics and humans. You guys caused a lot of destruction. A lot of people died. It's not your fault, of course"  Jacob wasn't looking at Zen, but at his shoes as they scuffed over the tiled floor. "It's not your fault, but people don't trust that omnics are done bringing war."  
  
Zen had very little to say to that. He was built to follow orders, like any omnic, but he didn't know if he was capable of killing someone. There was something fundamental about his coding that told him it was wrong. Did HRBs feel the need to obey commands? Perhaps they were independent of typical law? Perhaps it could even be a good thing?  
  
"Mister Jacob."  
  
"Just Jacob, please." 

"Jacob," Zen corrected. "What causes Hyperempathic Reactivity?"  
  
To Zen's surprise, the technician shrugged unassuringly.   
  
"Nobody knows. It occurs randomly, and there seems to be no faulty part that causes it. We've looked through the most fundamental codes, can't find a damn thing."   
  
Just then, the door opened again. Zen began to take a step towards it before Jacob grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him down to his level.   
  
"Don't let them know you asked that question. Your name is ZE9-N. Understand?"   
  
Jacob's voice was hissed out into one of the microphones on the side of Zen's head. The urgency in the man's tone shook him, so that his joints locked with tension, but he nodded his understanding before fleshy hands were pushing him through the door. It fell shut behind him with a clatter, sealing out all mechanical noise from his fellow omnics. It was eerily silent here, the only noise a discrete buzzing from the light overhead. A grizzled, tired looking woman with dyed orange hair gave him a flat smile and waved him to come over and sit down in the conference chair beside her. He obliged without a word, trying to pretend his artificial neurons weren't rapid firing in fear of what Jacob had just said.   
  
The lady had a clipboard in hand, twirling her pen in a very similar style to what the technician had been doing.   
  
"What's your name, unit?"   
  
The instinct to reply with "Zen" was suffocated immediately.   
  
"Unit ZE9-N," Zen replied as steadily as he could, his voice crackling with fear. Luckily, that was normal. Jacob had told him it was normal, and he hoped for all that man's word was worth that it was true, because it was difficult to control his voice modulator when all he could focus on was being as compliant and emotionless as possible.   
She scribbled something down silently.   
  
"Have you made any friends so far, Unit ZE9-N?"  
  
He forced his hands to stay in place, and not begin tip-tapping on his arm.   
  
"I talked to unit ZE1-M. She seems excited to see the outside."   
  
The woman looked up with an unreadable expression, her eyes narrowed and her mouth pursed. Zen could feel his fan racing to cool himself off.   
  
"Yes," the woman replied after a long time.   
  
He'd said something wrong, he must have. Why would he tell her that he had made a friend? Why did he have to include Zeim in it? For something made to think logically, he was being uncharacteristically stupid.   
  
"Stand up," she commanded, and Zen was quick to follow the order, effectively terrified.  "Turn around."   
He rotated 180 degrees, his shoulders stiff as if he was under physical threat.   
  
"Put your hand out- very good, palm up please. Touch each finger to your thumb one at a time? Good. Perfect."   
  
She went back to writing, her nose buried in the clipboard. As much as Zen would have liked to sit down, to take the weight off his trembling legs, he was petrified and too afraid to ask. So he stood there, waiting for her to ask him whether or not he wanted to be shut down.   
  
"Alright," she chimed, "Good to go. There's a bus waiting for you outside."

This time, he had no time to think before the words fell out.  
  
“Really?!” he sputtered, the surprise evident in his tone.

“Yeah. Go on, I’ve got other omnics to assess.”  
  
He let out an audible sigh of relief, spitting out a gleeful “Thank you!” before rushing out the back door, into the light.  
There was a sun in the sky, golden and blinding in its light as it hovered over the horizon. Zen could hear as his processor worked to pull up information about everything around him. Trees. Leaves. Wind. Birds. The compound was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, but beyond that lie only nature in its most lively state- fog had begun to form in the trees where the sun’s light no longer touched, casting long misty shadows through the woods.  
How lucky he was to be built in the spring.  
There was a crowd of omnics waiting outside, behind the building- everyone that had been in line in front of him, crowded outside the doors of a large bus. He dove into the commotion immediately, looking for the familiar, rounded face and two forehead lights of Zeim.  
But she was nowhere to be seen, which meant she’d gotten lost? Somewhere between the clinic and the door, surely, she must have wandered off. It was a big facility, after all, and maybe the inspector had not given her directions.  
Two more omnics came out after Zen. Seven more. Ten more, and then Jacob, bearing a cold look. The doors opened and his brothers began climbing aboard the bus, and still there was no sign of Zeim.  
Eventually, Zen was the only one who had not boarded. Jacob was walking back towards the facility, and Zen had to run to catch up to him, laying a hand on his shoulder to stop him.  
  
The man turned to him with furrowed eyebrows, and Zen could feel his processor slowing and his arms grew cold.  
  
“Where’s ZE1-M?” he asked, voice sounding meek.  
  
Jacob tensed a bit, his eyes lifting to a more sorrowful look. He seemed lost for words for a minute before he was able to meet Zen’s gaze.  
“Did you know her?” he asked solemnly.  
  
“We… talked. I think we were friends.”  
  
Jacob shook his head.  
  
“She had a speech impediment.”  
  
There was a long, empty moment where Zen could swear he was feeling pain. He could feel physical pain, being that it was an important tool for survival, but there was no logical reason for his chest to hurt. He found that his head instinctively lowered, and he wondered if he might be going into sleep mode.  
A warm hand rested on his shoulder, and he looked up from the asphalt.  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
When he spoke again, he was somewhat quiet- not particularly broken, but absent of his typical optimism. “Thank you, Jacob,” he said, and shook the man’s hand before he turned to board the bus alone.


	2. Verim Packaging Co.

Today was Zen's sixth birthday.   
  
It had made the manager laugh when he'd said it aloud, but nonetheless, the woman had given him a 600 rupee bonus for his trouble. "Buy yourself something nice," she'd said. It didn't exactly sound good-natured, but Zen was willing to accept the money despite the taunting in her tone. He needed as much as he could get to keep up with rent; even a measly 600 would work.   
  
It had been a while since he'd been able to fill up his oil canister, and his hydraulics were suffering the consequences. He couldn't move without squeaking nowadays. Luckily, he wasn't the only one. Nearly every omnic he knew creaked and groaned like a rusty door hinge. As a result, the sound kind of filled up Zen's day, from working in the packaging company to when he went home to the metal district. The humans often joked that the very place was haunted, with how loud the groaning grew at night.   
  
The less funny version of that joke included the phrase "I can't tell if it's the omnics or their joints complaining!"   
  
  
Like anywhere with a significant omnic population, Agra had its biases. The people here saw their omnics as workers, and unhelpful ones at that. The fact that humans still worked at factories made for an easy way to blame omnics for not working hard enough. Agra, India was one of the few places left where humans still did menial tasks such as packaging, farming, or waiting tables. It was a difficult reputation to live with, but Zen could at least be happy he lived here, and not in Britain.   
  
News stories popped up by the day that major news outlets sheepishly refused to cover, but a quick search made it easy to find. Articles and police reports of omnic "revolts." Images of omnics like Zen carrying picket signs, huddled just outside their designated districts, heads low. Bots huddled over the beaten, dented metal of one of their brothers who was said to have gotten malevolent. Zen pulled up the news article in his head, one from a nearly-underground journalist who liked calling of themselves an omnic ally.   
  
  
  
_"He yelled out, and I swear he sounded as human as anyone: 'Let me live!'. The authorities must have... thought he was being violent. I suppose. They tazed him to the ground and then watched as bystanders began to throw rocks. I did what I could to protect him, but I couldn't catch every rock."_  
  
"Did he survive?"

 _"He did. He lives on the streets, missing two limbs. The other one was so damaged that he can hardly use it. He can't work, and he can't afford to pay for repairs. I'm worried he'll waste away soon, like so many of us do."_  
  
"Did you say you were worried? What compelled you to protect this strange omnic if you do not feel emotion?"   
  
My source declined to answer, and shortly after I asked the question, she left. It almost appeared to me as if she was trying to figure out the answer herself, acting as a human does when presented with a provocative question. Like this one, for example: How are we to decide what is and is not alive?  
  
  
Zen tapped the metal of his kneecap idly with a metal finger tip. How could anyone be trusted to make that decision?

 

 

 

He had the next day off, speaking technically, and he used this privilege to go wander around the metal district. His apartment, ten-by-ten feet across, on the tenth floor, had no windows, but it was situated on top of a large hill. When he stepped outside, he had a wonderful view of the city of Agra in the distance, sparkling with human architecture and cleanliness. The place he was headed was further that direction, but still well within the boundaries of the metal district. There were a few familiar faces about, but none of them gave him anything more than a passing nod as he went by until he found himself in front of the beaten iron door of his destination. He tapped on it with a knuckle, and a panel slid open at eye level. One single, round blue lense peered at him from inside for a few moments before the panel closed again and the mechanisms unlocked. The door groaned open in front of him and he stepped inside, tipping his head to the bouncer- a big omnic whos head amounted to more or less, one large, spherical eyeball. They called him Mono- short for monocle. He returned the gesture with a friendly wave, for as long as Zen had known him, he had never spoken a word.   
The inside was styled something like a tavern. Circular card tables were spread about the center of the lobby, the crowds of people obscured by the fog of e-cigars. Many of them huddled around specific tables, their attention piqued by vendors who congregated here to advertise. Zen moved past them silently, not enough money in his pockets to spend on wares. Instead, he headed to the counter, taking his seat among other worker bots. Murphy was in the middle of helping a customer, but he must have seen Zen come in because he flicked his hand up in a wave. A few more moments of conversation before he passed the omnic a cup, and then he was jogging over, a smile on his expressive visor. He spoke with the gravelly voice and a Pakistani accent.  
  
"Zen! I was wondering when you were gonna show your face again, you fuckin' lunatic. How was your birthday? Spend it well?"   
  
Zen chuckled quietly at the greeting- Murphy was no stranger to Zen's philosophical rants, but they had known one another long enough that it was no longer taboo to talk about.   
  
"I had work," he replied, placing a hand on his cheek as if rubbing his eyes would relieve him of some exhaustion. He did not require sleep, being solar powered, but it felt like so little of his time was spent in the sun nowadays, he was almost perpetually tired. "But Miss Vera gave me a little tip."   
  
"How much?"  
  
"Six-hundred."   
  
Murphy actually laughed at that, as incredulous as Miss Vera had been when Zen said it was his birthday.   
  
"Wow! That's almost enough to afford a can of oil!" he exclaimed with an impressive amount of sarcasm for an omnic. Zen chuckled alongside him, trying not to let the disappointment get the best of him again. Murphy pretended to wipe a tear from his eye, and then waved his hand dismissively. "Whatever. Take one on me. Happy birthday, champ."   
Zen wasn't even able to get through an objection before a cup was planted on the counter in front of him.   
  
"Oh, no, you don't-" he interrupted himself with a sigh, shaking his head. "Thank you."   
  
Murphy had a good ten years on Zen, having fought personally in the omnic crisis. His breastplate sported countless bullet holes, and he often complained about times when his memory would randomly kick in, bringing him back to scenes full of gunfire and blood, rendering him frigid for some time. Zen had only been there for one such episode twice. Neither had been easy to talk Murphy down from- he was usually left speechless afterwards. All that could be done for him was to speak quietly, to keep talking until the bot came back to reality.   
  
It was difficult to imagine such a kind demeanor mowing people down with gunfire on the battlefield.   
  
Murphy had a bar to tend to, and was short for conversation. Zen lingered for a long while before he finally relented, tossing back the last of his drink before he headed for the door. The only thing to stop him was the sudden outburst of commotion from one of the vendors. Those who had tuned in, waving rupees about to get their hands on stolen discounts, now backed away from the vendor, who had hopped down from the table top.   
  
"Thought I wasn't gonna notice that, huh? Give it back!"   
  
Zen shoved his way unapologetically through the crowd of silent onlookers. There, on the ground, was a house omnic- a little six-limbed machine that ran around human households on all fours. They were made to retrieve things, two limbs having functional hands, but most people treated them like maids, or pets, or simply had them fight for entertainment. One of its legs had been broken and it was shuffling away letting out frantic beeps of alarm, a tiny bottle of oil in its hands. The vendor, entirely unimpressed, looked about to manhandle it, picking it up by one of its spindly legs and shaking the bottle out of its grasp.   
  
"Wait!" Zen shouted, his neurons firing. He struggled to speak above the conversation around him, but the vendor looked up, apparently having heard him. "Wait," he repeated, fumbling around in his pockets, pulling out a crumpled pile of rupees. "How much is it?"   
  
The vendor's head fell to one side in a way that suggested confusion.   
  
"Four-hundred," he replied, seemingly intrigued by the promise of money.   
  
Zen counted the papers out and handed them over, and in exchange, the vendor passed him the bottle with the house omnic still clinging to it. The crowd reassembled around the table with a conversational murmur, leaving Zen to rush back out of the front door.   
The house omnic was trembling as he set it down gently on the sidewalk. It let out a noise of protest as he tried to pull the bottle from its hands, but he gave it a reassuring nod and it peered at him for a moment before relaxing its grasp.   
  
Zen screwed the cap off and set the oil back down in front of it. Tentatively, it reached out, and then took a drink. And then, after a brief glance to make sure Zen wasn't going to try anything, it tipped the whole thing back and poured half of the bottle into its basin. When it was done, it set the bottle back down, and then looked to Zenyatta, each of its lenses adjusting individually until it supposedly found a focal point. It crept forward a few paces and stopped.   
Ever so slowly, Zen reached out and rested his hand on its back.   
  
It gave a cheery little whirr, and tapped its remaining three legs on the asphalt excitably. Zen couldn't help the laugh that came out.   
  
"What's your name?" he asked, to which it had no response. He picked the device up and examined it carefully, but there was no unit code on it, and the piece of tape on its back that would have once had writing on it was worn away by the weather.   
  
"Surely you have one? What do I call you by?" He spent a long time staring down at the little creature before he shook his head. "Buddy?"  
  
The machine had no response to give- it was still tapping its legs to the concrete, shuffling back and forth giddily. Buddy it was, then.  
  
  
  
Zen ended up spending most of the day in the sunlight, recharging his battery and letting the world's noise fade away. Unfprtunately for him, Buddy had very different ideas, but they were at a park, one of the nice ones that lay just beyond the edge of the metal district, so it could run around all it wanted. Zen wondered if it even noticed the dirty looks they were getting.

The house omnic was bustling around for hours, flopping through the grass on three legs every time it forgot that it could use its arm as a spare leg. In a little under three, it had adapted well enough to be able to walk, albeit not properly. It was more of a limp. Zen was watching the omnic so closely that he didn't even hear a man come up behind him, not until he cleared his throat, and Zen turned around to face him with a cheery wave.   
  
"Hello," he chirped. The man's expression remained stony. "How can I help you?"  
  
"Hey," the man replied warily. "Listen, you're gonna have to go back to the metal district. You've been on that bench too long, you're starting to intimidate people."  
  
Zen let out a quizzical hum, glancing around to see that most of the parks patrons had left despite the fact that it was a little after five PM. The few who remained were staring daggers into him. 

"Terribly sorry, sir. I don't mean to look hostile."   
  
"Yeah, well, forgive me if I don't trust you. C'mon, man. Go home."  
  
Zen glanced down at his arm as a panel opened, displaying beneath it a little screen with a percentage- 47% charged. The metal district was gloomy- the buildings were not made for comfort or beauty, they were built for convenience. Most every corner of the district should be covered in shadow by this time.   
  
"May I charge to fifty percent? I am at forty-seven, I'd like the energy for work-"  
  
"I'm not going to ask again," the man interrupted, anger burned into every line on his face.   
  
Zen looked to the ground with a sigh.   
  
"Very well," he said, and pushed himself to his feet, waving Buddy over to him. The little omnic perked its head and stared for a second before hobbling over to him through the grass, apparently excited. It slowed its pace only when it got close enough to the strange man to examine him, its eyes scanning him from the toe up. Zen was about to call him again, urgently, when the mans temper apparently broke. The only warning Buddy had was the growing scowl on his face before he swung a leg out, kicking the little bot onto its back. It let out a chirrup of terror as it flipped over, its legs scrabbling to get back up.   
  
Zen had never experienced anger before. He felt an unusual wave of aggression come over him, and suddenly he was frantic, as if it were about to drown him. He gritted the metal of his jaws together, fists clenched as he took a step forward.   
  
"Do not kick that," he warned, and reached down to help Buddy. Before his hands got even close, the man did it again, and this time, Buddy let out a painful squeak as he tumbled out of reach. His legs were curled in like a dying insect, and Zen literally threw himself into the dirt to get to the little omnic before the man decided to do something worse. He picked it up in one arm, surprisingly gentle even as his other fist tightened.   
  
"Why would you do that?" Zen asked, abhorrence making his voice shoot up half an octave.   
  
"I don't take orders from you, machine. It's the other way around. Give me that house bot, I'm not done with it."   
  
Zen hugged the creature to his chest, shaking his head in denial.   
  
"No," he replied steadily. The man looked personally offended.   
  
"What do you mean no?"  
  
"I'm not giving it back to you."   
  
The stranger didn't like that answer. Suddenly, his hands were out of his pockets and on Buddy, trying to wrestle the little omnic out of Zen's arms as it squealed with terror. Zen didn't think before he acted. He just did it. With one smooth motion, he carried his fist upwards. He felt the metal his skin, but he didn't stay to see the outcome, because almost as soon as he punched man in the jaw, he realized what a mistake he'd just made, and made a run for it. There were footsteps behind him for a moment until he crossed the road, heading back for the metal district, where they faded out.   
  
As a machine, Zen could outrun most any human, but that didn't mean he was taking chances. He didn't stop running until he was back in his apartment building, and then he slowed to a jog. When the door of his apartment closed behind him, he fell to the ground, putting his back to it. Finally, he lowered Buddy from his chest, onto his lap. The machine quivered there for a long time, another one of its legs fractured with the impact. A few sparks jumped out from its torso- assumedly an issue with wiring. After a long time spent comforting it, the omnic rose to his feet and wandered over to his dresser. He always kept spare wires handy if he could afford to, along with a tiny soldering kit.   
  
Within an hour, he had the little omnic repaired, but it took quite a while longer for it to stop shaking. He couldn't blame it- he too was shaken. What had compelled him to violence? Omnics were not made to be self-defensive, or any kind of defensive for that matter. He was supposed to put human life before his, wasn't he?   
It's not like he killed the man, he supposed, but a sensation of guilt settled in him-  
No, it didn't. He was an omnic, he could not feel guilt. He could not feel anything.   
A tidal wave of questions cascaded over him.   
  
Was the inspector wrong about him? What if he had faked being emotionless? Was that feeling anger that he'd felt? He had been driven to violence over the idea that this house omnic was in danger, and that wasn't natural. He just didn't want it to get hurt. He quite liked its little mannerisms, and would prefer to keep it in working condition.   
  
He lay out of sleep mode for the rest of the night. The run had drained his battery by 10% and by morning he would be lucky if it was at 30%, but he was unable to coax himself to power off. He'd swear that even this silence was too loud. He was feeling, he was sure of it. He felt anger. He felt kinship with Murphy and once, very long ago, with Zeim.   
Zeim. He'd felt sadness. He knew that, it couldn't be anything else. None of this made any sense- if he was a machine, how was he to feel? Feelings were cause by chemicals, of which he had none, but when Zeim failed to come out of the factory, he'd felt heartbroken. Just now he'd felt love for a, quite frankly, useless little house bot. It served him no purpose, and granted no benefit, but he desperately wanted to keep it safe.   
These thoughts haunted him through the night until he stepped out of the door the next morning to go to work. And then he only felt tired. 


	3. On Strike

They had been organizing for weeks now.  Zen was the first to advocate when Unit Y22-A began talking about pay raises, how omnics around Agra were beginning to unionize and go on strike. Y22-A, or just Whyte, had been at Verim for as long as Zen had- probably longer, considering her age. She was a different model than the Z-units, her face a permanently blank, white mask. She was originally build to be a maid, but proved too argumentative around people, too forgetful to do her job. So, they brought her to Verim. Regardless of evidence, she swore up and down that she didn't have any errors, that the inspector let her go without so much as a complaint.   
  
Needless to say, she had quickly become one of Zen's favorite coworkers. They were huddled together over the assembly line, side-by-side with trained hands wrapping each and every item with expert precision, her voice low as she talked, and Zen quietly listened.   
  
"You'd think that after all these years, all these revolutions, humans woulda figured out that you can't deny rights to things that can fight for it," she ranted, passing a delicate porcelain doll back onto the belt. "You ever seen where the humans live? You ever been in one of their houses? It's like something straight outta a movie. It's clean, and it's big, and it's personalized. If you could see one of those things in person, I think you'd think of your apartment more like the cage it is. See this?"  
  
She lifted up one of the dolls, turning it over in a hand.  
  
"This is gonna go on a shelf in somebody's room, for like 650 rupees. Just cus they like how it looks. You got anything like this in your house?"  
  
Zen did have to think about it for a moment, despite the fact that there was actually nothing in his apartment save the trunk he kept his clothes in. So was the case for many workers- blank, empty walls, no windows, and no shelves. The only purpose housing served was to keep omnics out of the harsh elements. In places with forgiving climates, it wasn't uncommon to go homeless. Luckily, Whyte knew the answer.  
  
"Course not. Need that money for oil, and new clothes and repairs, and new batteries cus they lock solar powered units like you and I in these shadowy factories and slums and expect 'em to run smoothly."   
  
Whyte had a bad habit of doing that- or, maybe, a good habit, depending on what your stance was. She was so openly passionate that Zen was want to say she was defective- but then, every omnic she spoke to for more than a few seconds very quickly picked up the same passion. That was a result of their compliant nature for sure. An omnic would follow any command if it were stated in an assertive manner, nd he was not immune to this effect. Every time she opened her mouth, a familiar sense of inspiration came over him to do something about it.    
  
They had most of the workers on their side- tomorrow was the day. Everybody would come into work and each of them would file up to the office door and ask for a raise, and when they were inevitably turned down, they would leave. Those who were especially involved, like Herb, would likely join Zen and Whyte outside with their picket signs.   
  
"Do you think it's going to work?" he mused, thoughtful.   
  
"Your plan, Zen, not mine."   
  
He laughed subtly under his breath, and she nudged his elbow- not violently, but it was more a jab than a friendly tap.   
  
"What are you laughing at?"  
  
"Well," Zen mused, passing a doll her way, "I don't know, but I think it will work better than most ideas you've had."   
  
"What?" she replied with a laugh. "No, I like my plan, it'd make headlines."  
  
"Yes, but you can't just burn everything down, that's the opposite of fixing things."   
  
Whyte let out a good-natured huff of disagreement. As much as he liked his coworker, he knew she didn't believe him on that front. Where she was content to force change, Zen wanted to see if there was a better way. A way of making people see the error of their nature, and let them change it themselves. He felt the best foundations were built on the individual, not the group. On kindness, and not on revenge.   
  
He had heard enough about revenge to last him a lifetime, it felt.   
  
  
  
  
The next morning came before Zen was ready for it. He was third in line- behind Whyte and Herb, but in front of everyone else. Herb went in first, being the oldest, and most respected in Miss Vera's eyes. He came out again bearing a look of cold dignity, and Zen sent him an assured nod as he left. Whyte was next- she invited herself in. It didn't take long at all for her to come back, shoulders back like she was ready to pick a fight with the first person to say she was wrong. Zen took a deep breath before he pushed the door open- to his surprise, the manager was waiting just behind it, her eyes widening at the line of omnics in front of her door. Her expression fled quickly, changing from startled to angry in half a second.   
  
"No," she spit. " _No."_  
Her voice raised until she was yelling now, hands animated. 

"None of you stupid bots are getting a raise- I'll fire every last one of you if I have to. With the money I'm not giving you, I'll just order a whole new line of bots. Ones that'll be grateful that they're employed at all! Do you have any idea how many bots rust out and die on the streets because they don't have jobs? All of them. Every last one."  
  
Zen stood rigid at the front of the line, his circuits whirring. There was an instinct there- do as you're told. But that was no longer in his best interest. If he was to obey, there would be lasting consequences. Every strike that succeeded was another step towards equality, an inch towards a real life.   
  
"Miss Vera, I feel as though-"  
  
" _No,"_ she retorted, "You don't  _feel_. You know I'm being reasonable, because you're a computer. Why are you choosing now to ignore the facts?"   
  
"Because, Miss Vera," Zen said after some hesitation. As much as he hated to admit it, he was bristling. He was tired. His battery life had not been above 50% for five years, his joints had not stopped aching since he was built. The walls of his apartment had begun to feel like prison bars, the shadows of the city a virus that drained his life of meaning. "I do feel. Right now, I'll admit- I'm feeling rather upset."   
  
The static crackle to his voice may have been convincing enough. Miss Vera stiffened, uncertain of herself.   
  
"I watch my brothers die on the streets every day because they can not afford to keep themselves alive, even when employed. I see them fight in alleyways  for basic needs, I see them looking to the skies and hoping to see the sun through the skyscrapers because we are not allowed out of the shadow. I see them accused of crimes on the virtue that omnics do whatever they're told. I see them abandoned and broken and deactivated and scrapped because they are no longer able to serve humans. I'd like to think there's a peaceful solution- I'm afraid I may be one of the few who still believe in that."  
  
His voice steadied after a moment of talking, but his body language was nothing if not sullen, his head lowered, his hands folded behind his back.   
  
"You may order more omnics, if it will make you happy. But I assure you, they will be no more compliant than us. Please consider that before you make an enemy of everyone in your workforce."   
  
Miss Vera had nothing to say to that, but gave him an incredulous look. Feeling that the conversation was over, he turned around and walked past the rest of the line, towards the exit. He could feel lenses following him as he went, but he dare not look back.   
  
  
  
  
He went home that night with a surreal fog in his processor. He could not be convinced that there was no emotion in him. He must be defective. The inspector was wrong about him. He felt anger. He felt sadness. He felt love and he felt friendship and spite. He felt happiness on occasion.   
  
His thought fell back to the factory, and to Jacob.   
  
  
_"There is no cure. We can't find anything that causes it."_  
  
No cause, no cure, not even so much as a clue. There must be something different about him that he felt emotion, certainly...  
  
Unless there wasn't.   
  
Like sand through an hour glass, the idea came slowly. There were so many realities that had been engraved in the coding of his very existence that refused to let the idea be true. The only way it could be true is if eveyrthing he knew was a lie.   
  
Perhaps every omnic had the capacity to feel emotion. Perhaps those HRBs, those who choose to live knowing they are plagued with emotion- perhaps the only difference between them and every other omnic is how soon they realize themselves. Perhaps it is the state of their world that drives them to give up. He tried to imagine it- after six years of life, six years of struggling to survive, and being questioned about his right to do so at every corner, was he not exhausted? Could he do it for four more? What about six? What about twenty?   
The question made him feel somewhat ill.   
  
There must be a cure. There must be a way to live with it, to get rid of it. There must be others like him who manage. He spent only a few hours at his apartment, idly watching Buddy. Was he complex enough to feel as well? Surely at least Buddy must feel emotions? He always acted happy to see Zen when he came home after work, he couldn't imagine it was coincidence. Buddy saw him and burst to life, unable to control how it stumbled around trying to get Zen to acknowledge its presence.  
Eventually, the omnic was forced out of his prison by restlessness. His battery was at 25%, but he desperately needed answers, and so found himself rushing through the hallways of a different, but painfully familiar, apartment complex.  
  
He hesitated for entire minutes before letting his knuckles tap the metal door. To his relief, it creaked open to a dizzy-looking Whyte, and guilt bit at him that he'd woken her up so late.   
  
"Zen, what's up? What's the matter?" Her voice was sleepy at first, but then she seemed to realize what was happening. Zen was at her door at a late hour of the night, and he was already beginning to regret the decision- she tensed up, her first assumption likely that something was wrong. He took a deep breath, trying to force the words out. It was too late to turn back now, and he knew that if he turned tail and sulked back home, he would only come back another time to ask the same question.   
  
"Nothing urgent, I just- I'm very sorry, this is out of line. You said you were approved without any errors." He looked down to watch his thumbs twiddle. "Do you ever think you're feeling... emotion?"  
  
Whyte was quiet for a long moment.   
  
"Guess they're not as good at catching defectives as they thought, huh?" she said flatly.   
  
Zen could have fainted with how her words struck him. Words he'd been waiting to hear since he first made it out of the factory, since his first experience with remorse. He laughed quietly, and then followed up with something slightly louder, and gleeful.   
  
"You do, then?" he asked, just to confirm.   
  
"Anger, mostly," Whyte admitted, rubbing the back of her head. "So how often do you think they miss one? How many HRBs are wandering around like ticking time bombs, just waiting to figure it out?"  
  
Zen clapped his hands together with a metallic  _clack._ He was so excited- something was bound to short circuit, it was just a matter of time, for sure. 

He presented the idea carefully. If Whyte was anything like him, his suggestion would take a moment to comprehend.   
"Whyte- what if they all are?"   
  
Whyte seemed to slow down briefly at the suggestion- she glanced one way down the hallway and then the other, as if to make sure there was nobody coming- and then she grabbed Zen by one of the hydraulic presses on his neck and pulled him into her apartment. It was a strange experience to say the least. Her walls and floor were the same metallic blue as his, in the same ten-by-ten square as anyone else, but from the ceiling were strung shards of colorful glass, and in the center, a lantern hung, its golden light casting every color of the rainbow down upon them. He was dazzled briefly by the colors, something warm lifting in him.   
  
"Beautiful," he remarked quietly, a smile in his voice regardless of the fact that he didn't have a mouth.   
  
"I thought I was the only one," Whyte admitted. He turned to see that she was situated at the other end of the room, one hand on her palm like she had a headache.   
  
"Think about it," he said, his frenzy soothed by the colors above him. "Do you act any more or less emotional than other omnics?"  
  
She shook her head, falling slowly to the ground so that she was sitting against the wall.   
  
"I remember being in the factory. Meeting other omnics- they were excited, weren't they? As excited as I was to see the outside. They were worried about being deactivated, they were hopeful that they may end up in the same place as their friends- what encompasses emotion? Does any of that count?"   
  
"It must," Zen insisted, eyes drawn to the battery gauge on his forearm. 23%. "I remember another Z-unit; Zeim. She was my friend. She had a speech impediment, and she was shut down. I felt pain, and I thought for sure I had a mechanical error. I felt sadness."   
  
He may have imagined the look, but he felt as though Whyte were beholding him in awe.   
  
"Is there a cure? Is there a way to live with it?" Zen was asking her, technically, though he knew she didn't have an answer. It was an idea, a hope rather than a promise. "There must be others."   
  
"I don't know," she replied.   
  
"Whyte," he said, and lowered himself to one knee so that, if they were humans, their eyes would be on the same level. "I think we are alive."  
  
There seemed to be a change in the air. The earth slowed on its axis for both of the two beings in the room to catch up with it. Zen had a hand on his chest like he expected there to be a heart beating there. Of course, there was not, but that was fine. He didn't need one.   
He was not alone. They could not be alone.   
  
"I'm going to look for others," he decided, feeling better than he had in years. Really feeling it, without convincing himself that he was imagining the hope.   
  
"What?" Whyte finally lost the amazement in her tone, traded instead for disbelief. "Where? Who? How?"  
  
"Somewhere, somehow, and someone, Whyte. How much longer can you pretend that you don't feel it? I can't do this forever."  
  
She shook her head fervently, arms crossed.   
  
"No, don't do that. You'll never come back, Zen- you'll die, somewhere far away, you'll rust out or be killed by less tolerant people. Or you'll go insane, and destroy yourself, just like the others."   
  
He folded his hands behind his back and turned away from her, finally bringing himself to his feet. His eyes were drawn to the glass shards above, watching them as they rocked back and forth, from left to right, moving only a few degrees in the draft of the apartment. He remembered the first time he saw the sun, and the trees, and heard the birdsong. How long it had been since he'd heard birdsong.   
  
"I may meet the same fate if I stay," he pointed out solemnly, and dared to touch one of the shards. It sang out almost inaudibly beneath the metal of his fingertip. Whyte remained in her silence behind him, but he could hear her stand up.   
  
"You're not coming."   
It was a realization. Not a command, and not a question. He looked away from the glass to see her shaking her head slowly.   
  
"I can't."   
  
Zen felt disappointment like cold iron in his circuits, for the loss of Whyte's spirit. The metal district had a way of siphoning it. He gave the reassuring nod of his head before he took a step towards the door. His hand tightened around the handle so he could watch the mechanisms at work to clench his fist.   
  
"I hope you change your mind someday. I'll see you again, I'm sure."   
  
He walked out of the door knowing very well that that may not be true.  



	4. Of Mice and Men

The first day out in the sunlight was like waking up from a coma. He had forgotten what it was like to be at full charge, it had been so long. Not since he was first shipped out of the factory all those years ago had he felt so invigorated as when he stepped out of his cage into a world that he had never envisioned to be as big as it was.   
  
The first thing on his mind was to leave Agra. The dark skyscrapers and ivory towers fell behind him as he stepped into the dark tunnels of the metro. The all-too-nearby sound of electromagnetic railways shooting through the underground drowned out the sounds of footsteps and conversation alike. Zen went to the kiosk before he went anywhere else, placing a finger on the star labelled "You are here." The seemingly nonsensical tangle of railways that went around Agra looked like hell to navigate, much less in any reasonable amount of time. Luckily, he was not trying to go anywhere in the city- he would be taking the one largest railway on the map that shot straight through the city, and kept going eastward. He had pinpointed a departure time- 3:30PM, fifteen minutes from now- when he heard the familiar sound of a human clearing their throat behind him. He ducked his head in apology and stepped out of the way with little more than the roll of his eyes, in spirit, at least. But the lady, a burly human as tall as Zen, gave him a friendly wave, apparently meaning to speak to him.   
  
"Sorry to bother you," she said, and Zen literally lifted his head in surprise. "Could you be so kind as to tell me where and when I need to board the train to 15th street? I know it's not your job, I'm just so bad at reading maps."   
She gave a sheepish kind of laugh, and Zen had to make it a point not to be too surprised. The metro brought in people from everywhere around- he shouldn't be baffled to find that a few were used to talking to omnics. He tipped his head politely.   
  
"Of course," he said, making no effort to hide the surprise and delight in his tone. He took a look at the map, his processor working it out like a maze in a few small seconds. "A train should be by at 4:15 bound for fifteenth. It will be the third stop from here."   
  
The lady bobbed her head in good spirits, and then extended her hand- it took Zen less time to figure out the map than it did for him to figure out what she wanted from him. Needless to say, he let out an amiable laugh before shaking her hand.   
"Apologies," he said, shaking his head. Both of them had some time to waste before their trains came by, and there seemed to be no reason they couldn't have a conversation. "I mean no disrespect, but I must ask- Where are you from?"   
  
The stranger gave him a quizzical smile, her hands pushed casually into the pockets of her suit. Wherever she was from, it wasn't in Northern India. Zen could tell that much by a pin on her breast pocket, bearing a gold and green insignia he'd seen on the news before.   
  
"I'm the chancellor of Numbani, in Nigeria. You don't have to apologize, by the way- I don't bite."   
  
Zen had a feeling that world travel was going to agree with him. He sniffed quietly, almost amused by the vastly different attitudes humans apparently carried towards omnics around the globe.   
  
"Ah, but I must," he corrected. "I'm afraid I'm not used to talking on equal terms."  
  
"Oh?" The chancellor put a hand to her chin, her interest apparently piqued. "What model are you, Mister...?"  
  
It took him even longer for Zen to realize she was waiting for him to give her a name- for all intensive purposes, every human he knew had known him as ZE9-N. All save Jacob, that is.   
  
"Zen," he replied, and pulled the sleeve of his shirt up to reveal the code printed on his upper arm. It had been scratched and brutalized over the years so the letters were ugly, but they were legible nonetheless. "I would be Z unit number E9-N, Miss Chancellor."   
  
"Ah, packaging. That would explain the height," she remarked, amusement in her voice. Zen stopped for a moment to compare himself to the other humans about. He hadn't noticed, but he was quite on the tall side. There was not a human in sight taller than him, though one or two came close, the chancellor being closest. He'd never given thought to it before, but he supposed it made sense to be designed with a height advantage, if he was to be stacking boxes on shelves for the rest of his days.   
  
He had little to say about it, opting instead for a dumbfounded, "Oh."  
  
"What?"   
  
"Nothing, I guess I just... never noticed."   
  
The chancellor bobbed her head in satisfaction, pulling a holotablet out of her pocket and stretching it to a reasonable size. She kept smirking to herself as if she could believe her luck about as well as Zen could.   
  
"So were you working in packaging, Zen? I hate to drag you into something political, but I have quite a few questions."   
  
Zen nodded tentatively, unsure of what exactly he was getting into.   
  
"May I ask what my answers will be used for?"   
  
The chancellor lit up as if he'd asked the magic question.   
  
"Well!" she sang, clearly excited, "You see, Mister Zen, my city aims to be one of the first in the world where omnics and humans live as equals. These are the foundations it was built on. Someday, I hope to push the agenda to other parts of the world, and India looks like one of the best places to start. But first I have to know what the omnic-human relations actually look like."  
  
Zen found himself beginning to share her excitement, his chest cavity swelling at the thought of peace agreements in Agra someday. Whyte and Herb and the rest of the factory staff with decent wages, sharing job opportunities and restaurants and parks with humans. How much, he realized, they would have to learn from one another, if only they could reach peace.   
  
"They weren't going to let me into the metal district to see for myself- they said it was too dangerous," The chancellor's voice pulled him from his thoughts once again, and he realized that she'd pulled up a notepad on her holotablet. "So tell me, Mister Zen, if I could ask a favor from you. What is it like?"   
  
  
  
  
Neither one of them were willing to give up on the conversation early, each of them vastly interested in the other's way of life. While the chancellor took notes on her holotablet, Zen was taking mental notes himself, every detail of omnic and human equality a new bombshell to his worldview. He could scarcely believe that in Numbani, they had community homes for bots who were no longer able to work, with decent funding. Orphanages for omnics who were recently created, to introduce them to social situations and teach them for different occupations. They had a choice as to which job they wanted. Meanwhile, he had the opportunity to talk about his own experiences.  
They talked until both of them missed their train, and then missed the next one.The chancellor had many questions about how he was treated as a worker. At the mention of the strikes in Agra, she nodded enthusiastically, only to look soul-crushed when he reviewed the conversation he'd had with Miss Vera. He talked about Murphy at the grill, and his untreated issues. He talked about Zeim and about Whyte, and when he got to the conversation he'd had about emotions, the chancellor stopped him, incredulous.   
  
"So you do!" she interrupted, startling Zen out of his story. "You say you've always felt it- but you passed examination? As did your friend?"   
  
He nodded, rather pleased that someone else was as excited about it as he was.   
  
"That's wonderful news, Mister Zen, that supports everything I believe in- do you think other omnics may have these same thoughts?" She was dancing around the real question at hand, as if afraid to ask it. Luckily, Zen had said it before, and he was already over the shock factor.   
  
"Miss Chancellor, I have often wondered if emotions are universal to all omnics. It's worth looking into, at the very least."  
  
She had nothing to say to this, but Zen could tell by the excitement on her features that she was nearly as shell-shocked as he'd been. Suddenly, an idea came to him- and he couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it until just now, the chancellor would be as enthralled as he was, certainly. He shrugged the bag off of his shoulder without explanation, careful not to let any of Buddy's legs hook on anything else in the bag as he pulled it out and rested the omnic on his lap. The chancellor's expression fell to that of curiosity once more. Zen couldn't blame her- it wasn't every day someone carried around a half-broken house omnic in their backpack. He tapped the power button and Buddy sputtered to life. As usual, he was lost at first- taking a moment to calmly look around his surroundings and figure out where he was before his cameras found Zen, and he went about his usual excitable tapping. It stopped only when Zen touched the top of its head with his finger tips.   
  
"My god, it's like a puppy," she exclaimed, a delighted laugh in her words. She was about to ask the question, but Zen was already giving her an answer, a little embarrassed at how proud he was of his companion.   
  
"I call him Buddy," he replied.   
  
Their conversation was cut short by the chime of the station's clock, and both of them startled to look at it.   
  
"Oh, shit," the chancellor murmured, her language obscured by a drop in the volume of her voice, as if everyone within four feet couldn't hear her. "I'm terribly sorry, Mister Zen, I should have been at the embassy hours ago. This was a wonderful conversation- tell me, where are you headed?"   
  
"I'm not sure," he admitted, resting a hand on the back of his neck. "I'm looking for others who feel as I do. You understand this is a very daunting realization for me- I never suspected other omnics may feel as I do until just recently. The factory told me most chose to deactivate themselves or destroyed themselves in a few years because of the stress emotion brings. I want to know if there are omnics who have learned how to live with it."   
  
The chancellor shook her head fiercely, apparently frustrated that she didn't have time to go into depth with that revelation. Regardless, she started fumbling around with her pockets, her holotablet back in her hands after a moment.   
  
"Sorry, hold on- I have to look up the name..."   
  
Zen leaned out of his seat on the bench, already trying to read the words on screen before she had the chance to tell him.   
  
"Ah," she remarked, and turned the screen his way- it was a blog post from a middle-aged man, one who claimed that he was once an inspector for culinary W-units. "There we go. The Shambali- I'm a huge fan, and I'd love to talk about them, but I'm so late it's not even funny. Go to Dhulikhel, there'll be somebody who can point you in the right direction.  _Sauka lafiya,_ Mister Zen!"   
  
She jogged off, heels clapping on the ground as she went, her foot passing the threshold of the train just as the doors began to slide shut. Zen sat quietly on the bench until it began to pull away, the last light of day peering through the staircase nearby that led to the city above. He was looking at a map in his head, one little dot in the mountains of Nepal- Dhulikhel, a smaller city just south of Kathmandu.   
There was so little to find on who exactly the Shambali were- apparently, they were not very well known, especially not outside of Nepal, and those who knew them only mentioned them in passing.   
Whoever these people or omnics were, they were his best lead. And he was extremely excited to meet them.   
  
  
  
  
The train ride took a little over two and a half hours, being that Agra's railways were a little underdeveloped. The only real hyperloop in India ran from Kabul, through New Delhi down to Mumbai, and then along the coast past Madurai, straight under the sea into Sri Lanka. The one he was on went only from New Delhi through Agra, and then onto Kathmandu. It was a long, quiet ride, most of which he spent in sleep mode. Being underground was typically exhausting, but after four hours of the day spent in sunlight, he was still feeling perfectly refreshed. The car was almost entirely empty save a very few, very tired-looking people in suits, likely on their way back from business trips in New Delhi.   
  
He arrived in Kathmandu at 11:30PM Nepal Standard Time. The train station looked just like the one he'd left in Agra. A kiosk lie in the middle with screens on every side sporting impressive scenery of mountains and little welcome messages for tourists. He stepped up to one, and it blinked to life, a speaker overhead spurring out in a woman's voice.  
  
"Thank you for coming to visit Kathmandu. Our visitor center is located above ground with access to maps, tourist destinations, restaurants, and more. Do you have currency to convert?"  
  
"Yes ma'am," Zen replied uneasily. He wasn't sure exactly how advanced the kiosk AIs were, but it was better to be safe than sorry. He fished a wallet out of his bag, taking every last paisa he owned and feeding it into the slot. When he was through, he tapped the prompt, and the machine hummed thoughtfully.   
  
"You have submitted one-thousand, two-hundred, forty-three Indian rupees and twenty-two paisa. At the exchange rate of one-point-six, your total return is one-thousand, nine-hundred, eighty-eight Nepalese rupees and eighty-seven paisa." 

The machine spit money from a small slot just beneath the screen- it took a few minutes to dispense all of it, and even longer for him to try and cram all of it into his wallet. It was industrial-sized for this exact purpose, but even so, eighteen hundred rupees was a great deal more money than he was expecting, and the coins were quick to find gaps in his hands to fall through, onto the asphalt. After a brief fiasco, Zen got it under control, electing to stash anything that wouldn't fit in his wallet in his pockets. He was a few steps away before he stopped, and turned back to kiosk.   
  
"Thank you," he said, as kindly as he could. He waited a few seconds in silence, waiting for a response before he shook his head and started up the stairs.   
  
"You're welcome!" came the delighted response from the kiosk. He laughed quietly to himself, a great surge of joy picking up in his stride as he took the stairs two at a time.   
  
Whatever he had seen online about Nepal, it could not rival the reality of it. He was struck with awe the second the streets came into view from the railway. Buildings as old as the mountains themselves nestled comfortably around the town square, which was paved in stone. Many buildings had more than one floor, but none more than three. The architecture itself seemed content to lay close to the earth, rooftops lying in stacks above them. Some buildings were gilded in gold, others choosing more humble shades of brown, red, and tan. Mountains loomed off in the distance, their peaks ringed by the clouds that they towered over. Only two and a half hours out, and Zen was painfully aware of just how far from Agra he was.   
  
He had the pleasure of staying the night there, under the distant shadow of the mountains. He had no money to waste on hotels or boarding, but there was no rain on the wind, and the summer air was an agreeable temperature- he took his place beneath the crested roof of a temple, his back to a brick-red wall, but he did not sleep. For once, it was from wonder, and not from stress- he simply found it too difficult to stop looking at the stars to shut down.   
  
He set Buddy on the ground beside him and activated it. The poor little omnic nearly exploded with excitement when it realized they weren't at home anymore.   



	5. Hyperempathic

He set off early the next morning, with nothing to his name save eighteen hundred rupees, two cans of oil, a knapsack, Buddy, and the tattered clothes on his back. He elected to keep his companion awake for the journey. It was less weight on his back to drain battery life, and Buddy ran off solar power like Zen. The sky was already blue as could be, and the few clouds that did roll in were well below them.

A taxi took him to the outer edge of Kathmandu, and he elected to walk the rest of the way. The sun was shining brightly over the horizon, so any energy he spent walking would come back to him.   
  
Dhulikhel was a tame kind of city. Flags were strung overhead, lacing back and forth over the streets. Unlike Agra, there were very few market stalls. Most functioning businesses had a building to themselves, and what few people were about the town kept to themselves.

The first place he headed was the city hall- surely if anyone knew about the Shambali, it would be the mayor. The building was not new by most standards- only compared to the ancient architecture around it did Zen find respect for its youth. There was a desk inside in the lobby. Two hallways, one on either side, went down about two-hundred feet, and on the back wall, there was a single door. Zen approached the desk, which lay empty, and tapped the bell on it.   
He waited twenty seconds before he did it again, and glanced around, expecting someone to come out. The second time, he gave the staff two and a half minutes, most of which was spent trying to figure out what he was to do if nobody came to help. Eventually, he gave in to curiosity, and moved towards the door at the back wall. His hand hovered around the handle, looking pensive for a while before he convinced it to turn the knob. The door fell open easily, apparently unlocked. The room inside was a bit dark, but intentionally so. An ancient man sat at his desk in the corner among a forest of small statues, candles, incense, inspirational posters, and dollar-store trinkets. Zen gave him a small, sheepish wave, and he returned it with a toothless laugh.   
  
“What brings you here, robot?”   
  
Zen forced himself not to wince at the old terminology, and introduced himself.   
  
“My name is Zen,” he said pleasantly. “I’m looking for someone- a group of people, I think- called the Shambali. I was told I could find them somewhere near Dhulikhel.”   
  
“Dhulikhel?” he mused, rubbing his chin, and Zen cocked his head quizzically.   
  
“Yes… A fine city you have here.”   
  
“Yes, very much so.”   
  
There was a long moment of silence before Zen found the words to ask again.   
  
“So… the Shambali?”   
  
The old man startled, as if noticing him for the first time, leaning forward onto his desk.   
  
“Oh! Sorry, I must have zoned out. Who are you?”   
  
Zen spent a moment wondering what game the man thought he was playing- surely this must be a joke? Whatever it was, he didn’t see any options other than to play along.   
  
“My name is Zen… Do you know of the Shambali?”   


“Well, Zen, my name is Aarav.”   
  
He forced himself not to get frustrated with talking in circles- impatience would only encourage the man.   
  
“Nice to meet you, Aarav. Who are the Shambali I keep hearing about?”   
  
“The Shambali! Ah, Mondatta, it has been too long!”   
  
The man cracked a smile as if he suddenly recognized Zen, and the omnic nearly slapped himself in the face. Of course- the man was old, and likely addled by one disease or another. It would certainly explain his lack of attention, or lack of hearing, one or the other, and it would certainly explain his memory. Just as he was celebrating his realization, he felt a chill sweep over him as he realized the man was not likely to recover. Omnics may get broken, or rusted or dented, but at the end of the day, there were few things that could not be fixed with an expensive enough repair.   
So was not the case for humans.   
  
All Zen could do was practice patience in his goodbyes, and bid the man luck on his way out.   
  
  


There seemed to be two different districts in Kathmandu. The historic district, with its ancient architecture and abundant statues, lay at the center of the city. The further Zen explored away from it, the more modern buildings became. Oddly, the historic heart of the city held taller buildings than anywhere else. Businesses in one-story malls were lain like flower beds down the sides of most main roads. Those that branched off sported small, humble houses with statues and shrines in the yard and talismans hanging from their porch.

 

He cleaned out the historic district of leads before noon, having stopped by the police station, mayor's office, three different temples, and the hospital. They had, of course, denied him any records of recent HRB patients. Not that he really expected them to oblige, being with laws and patient privacy and such, but he was at least hoping the person at the front desk could tell him something of use. If he had so much as seen another omnic recently, that would have been enough to keep Zen's hopes up, but the desk worker had not even been able to tell him that much. At 11:30, he ran out of buildings to poke around in and people to ask, and so was forced out of the heart of the city to start asking the residents.

 

At 4:00PM, he still had nothing. He had asked every shop on the entire three-mile-long main road, and then every shop on the road parallel and then every house in between the two before he finally had to sit down. A kindly lady had offered him water and a jalebi for his troubles, refusing to hear him when he tried to explain that he could not taste. Her five children had been pestersome, but endearingly so, and in the end, he was forced to pretend to eat the jalebi to spare the woman’s feelings.   
At the end of the day, he took to a little street corner in front of a restaurant that surely fumigated itself with smoke and the smell of roasted meat and buried his face in his hands with a stifled groan.

 

He should go back to Agra if he was being honest with himself. There was nothing here to find except pleasant people and beautiful views, and maybe a few good restaurants that served him no purpose whatsoever.   
  
The next day was no less disappointing. Having asked every building, he had taken to the sidewalk, stopping strangers in hopes that he would find the one person in the city who knew something about them. After hours upon hours of this, and all he’d managed to get from the townsfolk were irritable glares, assuming he was panhandling, a little bit of spit on his shoe from a woman with less patience than them, and four rupees from a kindly young man who did not speak Hindi, Nepali, or English.   
The day had been partially cloudy, pushing massive clouds of fog through the streets one at a time. As night began to fall, so did the rain, a pensive drizzle that set him on edge and forced him to seek shelter. He’d been shooed out of the first two, his very presence bad for business, and sat now in an alleyway, beneath someone’s drying laundry, his knees pulled to his chest and his head rested between them. It didn’t offer much protection, but it was better than nothing.

 

He had a job, and friends, and he'd left it all for something that didn't even exist. Verim wouldn't be caught dead giving him his job back, and being an omnic, he'd be lucky to get hired as a trash can. With a pained sigh, he buried his face into his denim-clad knees, aching from something much, much worse than cold.   
He sat like this for what felt like hours, feeling lost and trapped and angry with himself, until he awoke from his daze to something metallic clinking off the side of his head. He looked down to see an empty soda can lying on the ground nearby. Further away, an omnic stood at the end of the alleyway looking unapologetic, one hand drawn up as if they were inspecting their nails.

 

"Hey you. You a bum?"

 

Zen glanced down at his tattered t-shirt and half-shredded jeans, tempted to say yes for brevity's sake. He had no job, no house here, and very little money to his name. By all rights, the stranger was correct, but it felt self-deprecating to say so. In the end, he settled for a melancholy shrug, hoping to spare himself a depressing conversation. Apparently the stranger had other ideas.   


"I'm talking to you," they said, and settled down beside him with a grunt of effort, just a little too close for Zen's liking. "Whatcha doin?"

"Sulking," Zen said shortly, and scooted away.

 

There were a few seconds of silence that would have been blissful, if the other omnic hadn't been staring at him nosily.

 

"ZE9-N? That line was like, five years ago. You're too young to be a bum. Why are you sulking?"

 

Zen rested his head on his knees and looked away with a sigh, ignoring the question until two metal hands shoved him over into the dirt. He let out an irritable growl and pulled himself up onto his feet, angrily brushing grime off his shoulders and thighs. His bag was in his hands, and in an instant, he went from scrabbling in the dirt to stalking off to find another alleyway, far away from the other omnic.

 

"You're here to see the Shambali, aren't you?"

 

The words stopped him in his tracks, his anger waning only when he realized they had probably been antagonising him on purpose, to see how he would react. Still irritated, he let out a short sigh and looked over his shoulder, willing to practice patience for the first ounce of hope he’d had in two days.  
  
“What do you know?” he asked.

 

"You're not the first Herb to come looking for answers," they said, "Though you very well may be the youngest." The omnic had their head propped up in the palms of their hands, a disinterested tilt to their chin. Zen took a step back towards them tentatively, unsure of his position.

He took a long time to decide whether or not he wanted to trust the stranger before responding.

 

"What are they like?"

 

The stranger waved their hand dismissively. "Bunch of weirdos. I talked to one of them once, when he came to visit town. Called himself a Tekhartha, whatever that means."

 

He could imagine it now- a Tekhartha of the Shambali. A righteous, cloaked stranger bearing messages of peace and equality who vanished as fast as they had appeared. He was struck with awe by the fact that the stranger had the privilege of being the only one in the entire town to have spoken to one of them.

 

"He went towards the mountains, down the dirt road on the north side of town."

 

Zen was back to his old, enthusiastic self in an instant, his pack slung over his shoulder and his eyes to the ground to make sure he had everything. The only thing that stopped him from taking off were the questions still left unsaid.

 

"Who are you? Why did you help me?"   
The strange omnic stared ever onwards, expression unreadable. An omnic without emotions would not go out of their way to help without an ulterior motive, after all.

  
The stranger seemed to cast him a knowing smile, although it was more in mannerism than anything.   
  
“Who I am isn’t important. The world’s changing,” they said earnestly. “Someone’s gotta give it a kick to get it started, but those who start revolutions tend to die before they’re through. Better you than me.”   
  
He decided to ignore this answer for his own sake.   
  
“Thank you!” he called over his shoulder as he practically pranced into the street, right into the path of a taxi that shrieked to a halt and blared at him angrily. He waved his apology without stopping, his legs carrying him northbound towards the farmland that could be seen rising over the distant hills. Somewhere beyond them lay the answers he sought, tucked away in the remote mountainside. Buddy tucked away in his bag for the harshest part of the journey, Zen carried them towards enlightenment.   
  
  
  
The sun was only beginning to show its light over the horizon when he made it past the foothills. The peaks of the mountains had yet to turn into snowy crags, but the road was now forced to steer around steep hillsides, bringing him to high enough elevations to still see the city of Dhulikhel in the distance. Where once it had been a cluster of rooftops and statues, however, now it appeared to be but a colorless, indistinguishable construct on a distant hill.   
The road had been quiet thus far. He had been passed by more cows than people, and still only by three of them. For miles, all that could be seen were rocky slopes and bushy trees, wind tossing snow dust off the far-off mountain tops in clouds. The morning was spent in ascent of the first peak, geese shouting warnings at him as they floated by in their flocks. By dusk, he was only a few miles above the valley, the river like a thread in the distance, and he reclined against a stone the size of a small couch to admire the view.   
  
It went on like this for three days. The road seemed content to keep to the lower elevations, going to great lengths to wind through a valley rather than try to snake up a slope into the snow. On the fourth day, he found out why.   
He’d set out later than he’d meant to. The sun was over the highest peaks by the time he finally got on the road, but he had been hoping to make up for lost time by walking past dusk. Buddy had not been activated since he entered the mountains, in fear that he may be small enough for the eagles to treat as prey. The scenery had not yet begun to bore him, but the cold, blank mountain faces no longer held their original charm, and the only thing to hear was the wind and the sound of his footsteps on the dirt.   
  
Down in the valley, birdsong had made its way into the ensemble as well, but as the path bent skywards, the wind began to drown out all else until Zen trudged ankle-deep through the snow and lost the sound of his footsteps in the uproar.   
Its frigid teeth bit him to the very core. By afternoon, his processor was begging him to find warmth, unable to heat him fast enough to keep up with the gale. He considered turning back, but he knew that he would not get anywhere warm before dark, and so carried on, hoping the trail would bend back down soon.   
The snow grew until it came halfway up his calves, and the sun was beginning to touch the mountains when he realized he would have to seek shelter. The cold was affecting him physically now, the steel of his frame threatening to snap at even the slightest strain.   
His path, once a clear dirt road, was now marked only by small stone towers on the cliffside bearing scraps of red fabric that fluttered fiercely in the pull of the wind. For a moment, he thought he’d found a boulder he could nestle into, only to startle when he realized it was made of metal. He’d cleared the snow off and found his urgency renewed by the mechanical eyes underneath. The mountain refused to offer him shelter long into the night, forcing him to keep walking through the dark, feeling every step in front of him before he dare take it.   
It only took one misjudgement to rip his foot from under him. He let out a cry of terror as he fell through the darkness with no way of knowing which way was up. The rockface tossed him like a ragdoll as he hit ground, and pain seared through the back of his head, then his leg, and then his back. One more rock to the head and he was one with the darkness around him, stars spinning around him one last time before he shut down.


	6. The Iris's Embrace

It awoke, dazed, cameras fixed on the clouds above it. Altocumulus today, it seemed. The otherwise vast expanse of blue was dappled in masses of patchy white, hiding the sun only partially from view before crawling away and leaving a bright, painful light for its processor to deal with. The machine winced away from it, pulling a hand to shield its eyes. Already its situation looked bad- an omnic randomly deactivating while outside could not be a good thing.   
  
His.  _His_ situation looked bad. Questions came up as objectives in his head, standard restart protocol. His name? He wasn't sure. He had a vague memory of an elderly man calling him something odd. He could remember only a few precious sounds of it- it ended with an "a."   
Venatta... Genyatta... Forgatta...  
His head began to feel light, and in the same moment it began to roll to the side. Maybe a few more hours of rest before thought.   
  
 _Zen.  
_ He jerked back awake at the familiar syllable. He wasn't certain where the memory came from, but he was grateful for it.   
Zenyatta. That would have to do for now. He tried to focus on restart protocol- there might be no harm in falling back into unconsciousness, but he thought it best to be safe.  
  
He was... in India? He turned his head and groaned as pain bloomed from the back of his metal skull. The nanobots would likely be working on repairing that by now, but they could be notoriously slow to fix heavy damage. He closed his cameras, hoping the lack of information he had to process would dull the pain and make it easier to focus on where he was and what he was doing.   
  
He was not in India anymore. He had taken the hypertrain to Nepal. He'd had a pleasant conversation with a lady from... Mali. No, further east than that, he thought. Nigeria, right. She said she was building a city there for omnics and humans to live together in peace. She'd had many questions for him. About how he felt, and how he thought and what he thought and what he felt.   
  
Like a man waking from a nightmare, Zenyatta jerked up, hands raking at the metal of his pounding skull. He was lost in the middle of the Himalayas, after falling off a  _mountain._ Surely he should be more damaged? He thought, before blacking out, that he'd landed on his leg, but moving it did not cause him any pain. There was a dent in three of his back plates, but they did not hurt, and all of his wiring seemed to be in order. One by one, he took his fingers away from his eyes, letting the light in slowly until he could look around him, and then, he was not convinced he'd actually woken up at all.   
  
He was lying beneath a roof supported by tall, beige, stone columns. There were walls as well, but only speaking technically. They would just barely reach his shoulder if he were standing. In the center stood another column. It was thicker than the rest, and decorated with writing. Red flowers were stuffed around the base of it, their petals wind-tossed around the ground that surrounded him.   
  
He had not heard anyone approach, but a man's voice spoke out from behind him.   
  
"Ah! You are awake."   
  
A slave to the pain in his head, Zen turned slowly, but found that the sight was well worth it. Before him, an omnic as tall as he was stood, adorned in shining white robes. Minor scratches in his paint told Zen he was older than him, and his solar panels were arranged in a diamond on his forehead. Zen was struck speechless. By his luck, the omnic did not need to be pressed to keep talking.   
  
"How are you feeling, brother? You are a long way from home, and that was quite a fall you took."  
  
Without thinking, Zen threw himself to the ground in a bow, but was pulled out of it by the sound of a stifled chuckle.  
  
"No need for that," the strange omnic said, motioning for him to sit up. He obliged without complaint, settling down cross-legged as the other omnic was. "Now please- How do you feel?"   
  
Zenyatta made a noise, somewhere between pain and contemplation, rubbing the back of his head.  
  
"I have a headache, but I think I'm alright," he said after a while. "My name is Zenyatta." He offered his hand for the stranger to shake, and the other omnic startled as if coming out of a dream.   
  
"Ah! I have not introduced myself. How rude of me. Tekhartha Mondatta." He shook Zen's hand, and for once, Zenyatta was thankful he didn't have to worry about his expression. The old man had called him Mondatta by mistake, back in Dhulikhel. He must have picked up the suffix on accident. His name was Zen. He thought about correcting himself, but what a mess that would be.   
Either way, it was a good name, he supposed. It wasn't as if other omnics hadn't named themselves before, but he could feel his panels flaming up with the light of embarrassment. Before he could say anything on the matter, the Tekhartha was rising to his feet, and offering a hand in aid to help Zen do the same. He accepted gratefully, but apparently standing no longer agreed with him. To his ever-growing embarrassment, he had to catch himself on the Tekhertha's arm no less than twice, until the other omnic started encouraging him to sit back down.  
  
"Please, sit until you are well. It is my fault for pushing you-"   
  
"No! No," Zen insisted, grieved that he had to interrupt such an important person, "I insist, I'm alright. I'm sorry if I concerned you, I feel fine."   
  
"But you fell off a mountain, my brother," Tekhartha replied. Zen found himself surprised at the amount of incredulousness in the other omnic's tone. "You must take time to heal."  
  
"Certainly, but I am already standing. I would hate to delay a conversation simply to prolong a nap."   
  
Tekhartha put his palms before him as if trying to show him something- or perhaps he was misreading an impatient gesture. The two omnics stood for a long time in silence, apparently at an impasse that both were too polite- or too stubborn- to yield to. Finally, Mondatta's hands fell and he sighed in defeat.   
"Very well. This way."  
  
He led the way down a small, but wide staircase, guarded by three bronze animals on either side- a lion, a horse, and a rhinoceros. Only now did Zen begin to truly appreciate the scenery around him, though his headache was persistent. The stone around him was beige, as if it were carved out of the very mountainside, pillars holding cold torches high above them. Simple brickwork constructed the path beneath his feet and raised a massive bell over a grand, golden elephant statue that seemed to watch them as they passed. Snow dusted everything around them, but the wind here was calm. Looking up, he realized that they must be situated on the lee side of a mountain. The flat cliff face loomed overhead, as if to remind him that he was at its mercy.   
  
"Where are we?" Zen asked, eyes drawn to the buildings around him. There seemed to be no humans here, he realized. Omnics of all makes and ages shot him friendly nods as he walked by, none of them dressed half as elegant as the Tekhartha. Most wore only simple orange robes, although some wore woven necklaces or belts.   
  
He was led through the street leisurely, his head throbbing with anguish that he was ignoring it, under the brass bell that hung a little under a hundred feet over his head, and past countless curious eyes.  
"You are at the temple of the Shambali," the Tekhartha replied, leading him into a room with blankets spread on the floor, and sticks of incense propped on burners, despite the fact that there were very few omnics who could actually smell. The older of the two waved his hand to one of the blankets, inviting him to take a seat. Of course, Zen did as he was told, taking a seat on the one opposite the Tekhartha. His head pounded at him, apparently irritated that he'd decided to sit down so abruptly.   
  
"What brings you so far into the mountains, brother?"   
  
Mondatta's voice caught him off guard and he looked up to see the other omnic toying with... balls. Little golden-plated balls with blue glowing out from between the cracks.   
  
"I was looking for you," he admitted, hand perpetually resting on his temple. "I heard that the Shambali could teach me to live with my emotions."   
  
Mondatta seemed surprised by his answer, turning abruptly from his chore.   
  
"Emotions? And what did your makers say of this?"   
  
"Ah," Zen started, waving his hand in apology. "I am not Hyperempathic, supposedly. One kind factory worker warned me against following... my heart, for lack of a better term." 

"And yet you had a spiritual awakening?"  
  
Zen chuckled quietly.   
"I'm not sure it was quite an 'awakening-'"   
  
"How old are you, Zenyatta?"   
  
He looked back to the Tekhartha, who had leaned in, apparently very interested in his answer.   
  
"Six, as of two weeks."  
  
"Six years old," Mondatta marveled quietly, and Zen could feel his face warming, unsure of whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. The other omnic selected a ball and turned it over in his hand casually. It let out a bright hum. "I daresay you are the youngest who has come to us on their own accord- having not been told right out of the factory."  
  
"Will you still teach me?" He asked immediately, hands twiddling with anxiety.   
  
"You were brought to us by the call of the Iris, my student. I would consider it a great honor to teach you in its ways."   
  
Zen felt a sparkle of delight at the statement, though the feeling came with another wave of pain in his head. He groaned quietly despite himself, and the Tekhartha held the ball out to him.   
  
"Take this," he said, and Zen cusped his hands for it to roll into. Almost instantly, the ball sprung to life, spinning in a golden light, and the pain in his head vanished. More than that, he felt rejuvination through his entire body. He was  _alive,_ in his entirety, more than he had ever been. The village around him melted away and he saw nothing but the light of the sun and moon- each vastly different although they shared the same source. He felt the joys and sorrows of a thousand lives around him, the wisdom of an entire population of beings. For a few sole seconds, he knew every bit of harm and kindness he had ever done- that anyone alive had ever done, and just like that it was gone. The stone walls were back and he fell back to the ground with a thump that sent him reeling. For a moment, all he could do was look at his surroundings, so certain that he had been floating moments ago. When he looked back to Mondatta, he realized the orb was back in the Tekhartha's hands, his head bowed ever so slightly in amusement.   
  
"The floating is normal, my student," Mondatta said, making little effort to hide his jestful tone. "That being said, it never gets old watching one return from the Iris's embrace for the first time."   
  
"What is this Iris you speak of, Tekhartha?" The omnic had said very little on the subject- and now, having apparently seen it for himself, he could not resist asking.   
  
Mondatta's voice fell to a quizzical hum, and he rubbed his chin before settling into a more strict meditation pose, motioning subtly with a hand for Zen to do the same.   
  
"Imagine, briefly, that all living things are connected. Those we see as good people are made of the same ingredients as those we believe are bad. A lion shares the same life force as the smallest mouse, the wolf the same as a lamb. In our souls, what makes us alive- it is the same throughout us all. This is what we call the Iris, my student. It is our decision to follow the way of life, even- no, especially, where we find only death.  
  
The Iris connects us," Mondatta explained. The orb in his hand was almost concealed in light, vastly brighter than it had been in Zen's. "Human, plant, animal, and omnic alike. Where there is life, there is a connection to the Iris. From seeking to understand it, so we better understand ourselves and one another. We learn to feel emotion, and learn to control it. We learn to live in harmony with one another."  
  
Zen's eyes were on the orb as its light died and Mondatta placed it back on the shelf.   
  
"No doubt you want your belongings back?"   
  
He was halfway through nodding his head agreeably when something seized in his chest, and he glanced around fervently, hands patting himself down as if he would find what he was looking for in his pockets.   
  
"The-," Zen could not find the words to express himself. His hands were trembling in their attempt to mime out what Buddy looked like. "House bot?"  
  
Mondatta remained quiet for sometime, his shoulders fallen and his head bowed until finally, he let out a soft sigh and stood up.   
  
"Come with me," he requested, and Zen was already on his feet.   
  
The Tekhartha led him back towards where they'd come from, past the big elephant statue and to the left, into a common room of sorts. There was a low table in the middle and tapestries strung from the walls. They walked up a short staircase that led back outside and then down the other side into a room that was nearly identical. On the table, there lie Zen's knapsack, complete with his wallet, one can of oil, and a pile of dark blue aluminum.  
In his despair, he let out an undignified choking noise and stepped towards the table. He lowered his hand to touch the pile of ruin, fingertips soft against the crooked legs and shattered circuit boards.   
  
A familiar sensation came over him, one that had him hugging himself as he settled slowly to his knees. He was not made of light steel alloys, but of chiseled stone that weighed him to the ground, a bedamned chill in his chest. A hand settled on the back of his shoulder, and he looked up to see that Mondatta had settled on the ground beside him. Reflected in the metal of his face, Zen could see golden lights, and he realized his own solar panels were ablaze in gold.   
  
"We may heal grievous wounds, but we cannot reverse death. My soul pains for your loss," Mondatta said, his voice soft. Zen's eyes were locked to the floor, where one lone chip or circuit board has fallen.  "You have been introduced to the Iris. Reach out and find them there. "   
  
Zen let the cold fall away, seeking the lives around him to feel the Iris's comforting warmth. It was easy, now that he had felt it once before, to seek out the peace that it gave, but he could not lift himself off the ground, nor could he turn his vision to its light. Nonetheless, short-lived memories felt all too fresh in his mind, and for a moment, it was very easy to imagine Buddy by his side.   
  
The feeling left him with the arrival of an unwelcome realization, that this was his fault. Had he stayed in Agra, the house omnic would be alive and well. He had destroyed it with his stubbornness alone, and so the life fell to his hands.   
  
A hand rested itself on his shoulder, and he looked up to see the Tekhartha looking solemn.   
  
"I can feel your guilt, my student. You were not wrong to persevere where fate tested you."   
  
"You can feel it?" Zen asked. He didn't mean for his voice to curdle, but so it did.   
  
"Not as you do. The Iris allows us to sense emotions around us, as one detects the change of wind in an oncoming storm."   
  
Zen rose to his feet to collect the circuits and wires and aluminum plates off the table into his knapsack, after emptying everything else. He'd seen human burials and funerals before, but omnics were not often afforded such luxuries, their bodies too expensive to simply bury beneath the earth.   
  
"What do you do to honor the dead, Tekhartha?"   
  
  



End file.
